rankin in 1917 and ending with the story of margaret chase smith. here on c-span 3. >> next on american history tv, we continue the look at the 1864 presidential election between abraham lincoln and general george mclellan, the former commander of the army of the potomac. university of virginia history professor elizabeth barron examines the election from the point of view of the confederates. this is a portion of the symposium by the lincoln group of d.c. >> it's my pleasure and privilege from the university of virginia who will speak on the election of 1864 in confederate eyes. this is an important topic to address in the symposium so they

don't forget the whole other conversation going on in other parts of the country. they went on to teach here before coming to the university of virginia. the first two books were from a woman's point of view about women's opinions and activities in the south and in virginia. then the biography of a spy in richmond. they won many awards. her next book was on this union about the whole debate about the

discussion about our possible union dating from 1789 onwards. most recently her book is on victory and defeat and freedom at the end of the civil war. that has won a number of prizes with the library award. professor barron has been speaking widely including the lincoln bicentennial and the gettysburg civil war institute. also on c-span book tv. it's my pleasure to introduce elizabeth barron and she will speak. the set back.

>> thank you. >> good morning and thanks for attending the event. this morning i will address the theme of confederate interpretations of the election of 1864, but also southern unionists and border south interpretation. i'm going to take the south as a whole and to my frame. i will first sketch out debates and turn to southern unionism and particularly the role of the preemient unionist from the running made in this 1864 campaign and conclude by considering the question of whether the election was a turning point for the confederate war effort. they must begin with assertions that persisted in standard fare scholarship. confederate leaders believe that mclellan's election would ensure

the success of their cause. they were rooting for the democrat. the second assertion is that for all confederates, the reelection of lincoln was a crushing blow. now, neither of these assertions captures the complexity of politics in the campaign season. it's true that confederates followed this northern election very, very carefully. very anxiously. they didn't uniformly assume that mclellan had a fighting chance in the campaign 94 did they assume his election would be good for the south. as the election campaign geared up in the spring of 1864, confederates were arraigned in two camps. they were divided. a peace camp led by the vice president and represented most vehemently in the press by a georgia newspaper and sentinel was one of the two and the second was a hard liner camp. that's what i will call it for lack of a better term. this was the side that believed in victory and led by the

confederate president jefferson davis and represented by newspapers such as the charleston mercury. the stevens camp invested profound hope in the peace democrats or copper heads in the north. those critics of lincolns who seemed to sympathize with the south. the copper heads because of the affinity they had with the northern peace democrats. the stevens camp hoped for a negotiated skpeas that was based on an interlocking set of premises. one was that the north was deeply divided. the peace elements in the northern democratic party were on the ascend politically and might be primed to call for an armestice or even to recognize confederates. the davis administration in posing policies within the confederacy like habeas corpus

had lot of site of the core principal of the southern revolution. namely state sovereignty and the final premises is that neither side north or south had the will to keep battering each other indefinitely. these democrats accused lincoln of tyranny and called for an end toft war and seemed to ak wiess in the cessation itself. they found a barometer of northern opinion and developed in the development of peace societies such as the knights and the golden circle in the northwest. working on the premises, stevens and his allies argued that the confederate administration should make it overt policy of building up and strengthening the northern copper heads and

they should do so by making frequent proposals to the north. those proposals they reckon would expose to the war-weary northern public his unwillingness to treat the south. he would reject this and show he was unwilling to negotiate. this would strengthen the hand of the northern democrat who is presumably were willing to negotiate for peace. they argued that the confederacy should adopt a defensive posture and refrain from offensive fighting. lest a new conversion prompted them to close ranks. if the confederates were too aggressive, they would rally around lincoln in self defense. those rooting for the war and, wooing for it had a moment of vind kagds.

in august of 1864 when the democrats and chicago convention for the party called for an immediate cessation and a convention to negotiate a peace. they said this platform was the first real ray of light he had seen since the war began. that's how hopeful he was. once the shooding stopped in some negotiation or convention, no one would have the heart to start shooting again. what did they think they might negotiate for at this stage? what might transpire to consider peace? such a convention would be a way to bypass lincoln and jefferson davis, each of whom was a hard liner, unwilling to negotiate. perhaps a convention might turn back the clock and reaffirm

sovereignty and disavow emancipation of a war aim of the union. confederate copper heads fantasized that such a convention might bring victory. either recognition of the confederacy, the first choice or as a fall back position, reunion on the south's terms. this was completely unacceptable in this debate. the hard liners for davis and his peace without independence was failure and the offering of peace proposals to the north was a sign of weakness that would only serve to stoke northern aggressi aggression. these hard liners agreed that the confederacy should work to weaken the north from within by encouraging the peace elements, but only clan destinely through an unofficial diplomatic mission based in canada.

it would provide secret societies in the north. they catched such plots in new york to spark a financial panic and raiding prisoner of war carms in the northwest and arming the inmates to undermine the northern war effort. it's easy to dismiss these plots that came to naught as hair brained schemes based on delusional thinking. they reflected the hope on the part of confederates in both camps and the season in the north might be attended with violence. social ka on the might break out in the north or perhaps armed mutiny on the draft riots of

1863. hard liners rejected the idea that they should openly endorse the northern peace democrats and feared that it would backfire and discredit the democrats in the eyes of the northern electorate. they said jefferson davis wants mclellan to win and that wouldn't be good for the campaign. indeed the press had a field day when stevens said he thought the platform was a ray of light. hard liners invoked a deep rooted tenant of cessationist ideology. this goes back to the coming of the civil war. the argument that the party could not be relied on to protect southern interests. hard liners invoked this tenant. the lesson of cessation, the charleston mercury reminded the readers was that the south could depend upon no party at the

north for liberties and institutions. noting how many were old democrats and members of the party and butler was the most notorious. they concluded they are all united. they had the willingness to negotiate and recognize southern independence. the hard liners believed that the democrats's choice was far more revealing. mclellan, hard liners argued was clearly a war democrat, someone who rejected southern independence and who was not to be trusted. they invoked the hard liners and the acceptance letter of the democratic nomination in which

he got the reunion without the south. the letter said the union must be preserved as all hazards. i could not look in the face of those who survived so many bloody battles andle t them that the labor and the sacrifice has been in vain and we abandoned that union for which we had perilled our lives. no peace can be permanent without union. mclellan's po sigz position at. a dispatch editorial they asked shall we be slaves to the yankees and answered general mclellan said we shall. mclellan's stance would lose him the election the editorial predicted because it erased any meaningful difference and they were pro war. if he left the northern masses,

any ground for hope that his election would stop the blood and money, he might have been elected. given the choice between two war candidates, the people of the united states can have no reason to change their government. it is the old contest between the outs and the ins. in short, the two confederate camps differed not only on the question of means, but also ends. hard liner his little faith that a democratic president would do the south's bidding. instead they wished for lincoln's defeat because it might herald the military triumph. here's the key point. the core principal of the hard liners of jefferson davis was that only battlefield victories and not politicals would win southern independence. the end of the hard liners was not to encourage them. that was a secondary aim, but to re5 them and stoke the will to

fight on the part of confederates. jefferson davis himself in his speeches and communications in the 1864 campaign, spring, summer and fall of 1864 played down the importance of the northern election and didn't say much about it. yankee atrocities and confederate manpower. they invoked the outrages in atlanta saying would you give it over to the brutality of the yankees. his prips for confederate victory was simple. everyone able must go to the front. so many had shirked duty. if half the men now absent without leave will return to duty, we defeat the enemy. this is his message. he went on and the yankees

worked as he declared and the only way to make them civil was to whip them. you can whip them, he told them in october of 1864. if all the men capable of airing arms will do their duty. the fate of the confederacy he insisted was in the hands of the confederates themselves. what was the end game? the position of the stevens faction, this wish for peace and negotiation commanded substantial support in the spring and summer of 1864. that support waned in the fall as military successes improved the prospects. we credit the fall with sealing the victory, but in confederate eyes and for the virginia press, they reverse in the shenandoah valley were as pretentious as the fall of atlanta a. the defeat prompted the discatch to lament. the enemy will raise the triumph

over this victory. this battle will secure the election of lincoln of which there was no doubt before. with theacy democrats losing ground in the wake of northern battlefield victories, stevens now publicly accused davis, the president of failing to do the right thing of failing to have fully promoted the peace party to give it a fighting chance. he speculated in a controversial letter which he wrote on november 5th, 1864 and which was widely reprinted in the confederate press, he speculated that jefferson davis preferred lincoln's election to mclellan's. davis considered this a scurriless charge and denied it. the confederate president and vice president were at war. but many of the country men never took clear and consistent positions aligning themselves with one interpretive camp or another. instead these confederates

careened back and forth between these two poles. in somersaults of reasoning. the mental acrobatics became ubiquitous as confederates are in damage control mode. in damage control mode, they take to arguing that there is indeed no functional difference between lincoln or mclellan or that the idea that they had ever looked to the yankee election was itself a spurruous piece of propeganta and they had never been so diluted. some began to argue that the election might be preferable. the writing was on the wall. lincoln's election might be preferable. after all, lincoln was the devil that southerners knew. we prefer a brutal fool to any other man.

mclellan's life might breathe new life. his election might breathe new life into the northern war effort and splinter the south as they accepted peace on northern terms. as the reverend, rector of christ church explained in october of 1864, the election of lincoln is necessary for our deliverance. any other result should be disastrous to us. we need his foly and fanaticism. his mad pursuit of his ideas. lincoln's reelection must make us realize that we will make a choice to resistance if necessary and a condition of surfdom. as the election approached, both camps and hard liner and peace camps, traffic and images of fraud to explain why lincoln would win. confederate newspapers claimed that democratic meetings in the north were being disrupted by mobs and voters were being intimidated and the press was

trafficking and false reports of atrocities to whip up war fervor and lincoln himself would manipulate the soldier's vote to ensure his own victory. his tools will stuff the ballot boxes in every way and cheat and steal. no one has a doubt about the confederate union. we had no idea they will have a fair election and no hope for the election if they continue. such a view was echoed in a letter with the most acclaimed tarring to rafr. i long to know how it has gone. so many have been sent from the army and the government to use the influence patron age and means of their disposal and they will carry it by fraud if no other way. for the stevens faction, there was in such images of fraud and collection a glimmer of light.

the republicans's brazen theft they hope might bring it against lincoln by the northern public. this is what they were waiting for on the part of the northern republic. the hard liners and davis's camp saw things differently. in their eyes, the republicans would get away with fraud and intimidation and because lincoln and the radical republicans held the majority of northerners in their sway. in other words, the widespread election corruption was a sign in the eyes of davis of his strength and power, not his weakness. in the end, lincoln's victory did more to vindicate the hard liners with the commitment to confederate independence. then the copper heads. for lincoln's victory, they insisted it would make the scales fall from the eyes of southerners who had held out hope that the yankees would treat with their foes. in a november 17, 1864 letter

addressed to georgia senator who sought to know the process, jefferson davis described to them what he took to be the yankees's peace terms. we should submit to their yolk, acknowledge we are criminals and appeal to their mercy for pardon. davis would broker no such peace. they put it this way. presidential election took place several days ago and no doubt from the return that is the vulgar animal has chosen to desecrate the office. war there must be until we conquer peace. in short, throughout the campaign and the aftermath, opinion was divided with hard liners ascended as the copper heads falter. >> a quick water break here.

let me say a few brief words on the unionism as i focus on the campaign. it has been difficult for scholars to measure the extend of unionism and at issue is distinction between anti-discrimination confederates and those who registered protests of one kind or another. protests against the way the government was with critics of the war effort. we have the unionists and people who maybe were confederates at heart and masked that loyalty tow survive and to coexist with occupying the yankee armies. on the final category, we have true blue unconditional unionists who never supported cessation. the lines between the categories can be tough to sort out between dissent, opportunism and loyalty.

the true blue unionists who never accepted cessation and never renounced the united states lend 88 to the war effort. the historian they argued in a south versus the south. that the slave states furnished 450,000 troops to the union army, 200,000 came from the border south states that had not seceeded. 150,000 were african-americans, predominantly former slaves and 100,000 were whites. for them, the union success was synonymous with freedom. the motivations of unconditional

unionists were important. they were so varied to defy the roots or family ties. most didn't. many advocated along the lines proposed by the whig party, promoting industrialization and many others were democrats. many were anti-slave holder rather than they recented the power of the cessationist elite and some supported abolition. there were strong pockets to be found in the regions of the south where the slavery had not taken firm roots. they had strongholds like atlanta and richmond. they have a small minority of

them. they were at the heart of the presidential campaign. of tennessee, they were chosen to be the running mate. there is much about how active of a role they played and what motivated the choice. we were tempted to think this was a low stakes decision, twice presidents had died and been replaced. william henry harrison was there. in both instances, these vice presidents had departed dramatically from the policies of their predecessors within the ruling political party. they were not so distant from the vantage point and very much on the minds as they contemplate reelection. as a broadside, past experience

shows that the choice of vice president of the united states is almost as important as that of president. they evolved upon the farmer. we should vote for no man that we should not be willing to elect president. we are safe. on the ticket, the most persuasive explanation has been offered by who argued that lincoln picked johnson to give legit mas tow his policy of wartime and reconstruction and the union occupied south, particularly tennessee, arkansas and louisiana. lincoln was eager for the states to be welcomed back to the union under loyal leadership.

he had promulgated in september of 1863. this 10% laid out the depths for the confederate states into the union. they took an oath and restoration of the property rights slaves accepted. they had voted in 1860 and elect delegates and representatives to congress rejoin the union. lincoln's aim was to offer generous terms to give up the rebel yon back into the union. the 10% plan proved controversial. radical republicans in the northern congress argued that it set the bar for admission to the

union too low and insisted that 50% of the electorate must take that oath of loyalty before a state could be readmitted. lincoln is embattled on this and he hopes the selection will help to neutralize this critique and give congress an incentive to admit them to the union. perhaps to count the votes in the final tally. johnson's choice would represent the fusion of war and democrats with republicans into a newly bubed union party. it would help to haven the loyalists in the south. reward the southern unionist and use them as a van guard. johnson himself was a hero in the north at this point. his remarkable life story was well-known to americans. made him a villain to

confederat confederates. like lincoln, they came from the humblist of roots. he lot of his father and put to work as a tailor's apprentice and settled in greenville, tennessee. he worked his way up the ladder and in his career he forged a reputation as a champion of the command man and the non-slave holding farmer with andriy jackson. he was in his first term as a us senator from tennessee, accept centing that and he took a singular senator. he declared cessation to be anoduous diabolical that fairuous and hell bound doctrine. he paid a high price for this.

family was driven into exile. johnson himself hung in effigy and cursed his home state. he was rooted in the class resentments of non-slave holding farmers. they believe the healthy planters looked down on men like him. it was rooted in the differences of the regions in the south and low country plantation districts. finally rooted in a constitutional argument that the founders intended the union to be perpetual. it was synonymous with lawlessness. without the power to enforce laws he declared in 1861. johnson put this principal into action as military governor of tennessee. he put him in charge there. in march of 1862 after battlefield victories secured the union control over the western and middle sections of

the state. the wartime governor ruled with a heavy hand. he had conspicuous critics arrested and imprisoned. he had taxes on wealthy planters he seized and closed anti-union newspapers. johnson was determined that only unconditional loyal union men like himself rather than these latter day unionists would shape the future and so as governor he required that anyone who sought to vote would have not only to swear allegiance to the union, but to vouch that they rejoiced in the victories of the federal army and endured peace negotiations with the confederates. he owned a handful of slaves and supported the pro slavery agenda johnson came to support emancipation as a war measure as a means to punish the confederate elite and rob it of resources. fearing that emancipation by federal e dick, they would

alienate, johnson urged lincoln to exempt tennessee from the emancipation proclamation so he account work the inside, which he did. he freed his own slaves and setting an example for his fellow tennesseeans in the year that followed. he delivered a series of speeches in which he called slavery a cancer on the body politics and he appealed to pass a state constitutional amendment abolishing the institution. lincoln monitored these carefully. watched what he was up to. he not only abided the assertiveness, but rewarded it. he made it known behind the scenes for the tennesseean in this campaign on his ticket. at the national convention in baltimore union-republican parties convention in 1864, lincoln turned to tennessee's

convention delegates and they publicly made the case for johnson. this they did with stirring speeches on the floor that raised johnson for having stood loyal while in the furnace of the rebel yon. radical republicans had their doubts about the tennesseean. the pennsylvania congressman thaddeus stevens said lincoln should have been able to find a running mate without going down to one of the rebel provinces. others rallied around the nomination in the hopes that johnson with his pension for tough talk against the cessationists might push him towards a less lenient reconstruction program. they contrasted johnson's loyalty to the union with the all together less admirable record of mclellan's running mate. he was the very personification

of the copper head democrat and the campaign trotted out the voting in congress. all the many instances in which he voted against resolutions to support the troops and raise revenue for the war effort. these votes 3r5were proof. what about the larger group of southern unions? they were deeply divided and a few of them positioned themselves in a pro lincoln van gard and actively pushed for the president's reelection. among lincoln's most prominent border state and backers were montgomery blair of maryland and postmaster general and nemesis of the republicans in his state. robert j breckenridge who led that delegation to the convention where they were nominated. jeremiah clemens of alabama who urged the unionists in his state to push for the restoration under loyal leadership.

clemens warned confederates who he was trying to convert to the union cause not to fall into the trap of believes that the election might save them. in october of 1864, clemens tried to disabuse them of delusions. put no faith in the divisions among the people of the north. there party divisions it is true, but upon the one great question, that of restoring the union, there is unanimity. he said it would only prolong the war and suspend operations for a time and negotiate for a peace, but the only terms jefferson davis will offer him will be such as he care not accept. now, andriy johnson's presence on the ticket was endorsed by men such as these, but it by no means garra an teed the loyalists across the south. during the campaign, lincoln

came under withering critique from the right and left ends of the spectrum of unionism. he was opposedardently by unionists. border state delegations, for example attended the democratic national convention in chicago and late august to proclaim their support for the democratic party and its candidate and assailed lincoln and democrat unionists for the a bridgement of civil liberties for the refusal on the simple basis of union and constitution. these border democrats accused lincoln of profit cuting all the powers to the purpose of securing his own reelection. during the campaign, mclellan received backing from infullyential prowar unionists. men like kentucky's governor and maryland senator johnson. they were pro war and wanted to see the union prevail.

they had come to support emancipation as a war aim and did not favor the enlistment of black troops. they loathed lincoln and rejected the ceasefire and the argument that the war had been a failure in the democratic platform. war democrats. these conservatives often took direct aim. the mclellan democrat called johnson the meanest vilist most unskrup less and contemptible of all. for southern unionists, no less the spector of electoral fraud and intimidation loomed large. in tennessee, mclellan democrats protested the environment that all voters take a test oath. such an ocean, the democrats complained required that voters repudiate the platform and rigged the election in lincoln's favor. in the end tennessee's votes did

not count or matter, but the issue of fraud had symbolic valley as a campaign tool. in kentucky, the governor accused the authorities to suppress the vote, but he overlooked evidence that lincoln supporters had come under threats from democrats. meanwhile from the left end of political spectrum came a different critique. in union occupied new orleans and african-americans through the newspaper, the tribune accused lincoln of not being radical enough. they condemned his plans as too lenient and pushed for sufferage highlighting the heroism of service and said the congress and not the president should direct the course. similar arguments by a small but vo

vocal cad re. they worried that lincoln might be willing after the election to accept a compromise. for radical republicans, lincoln was the lesser of two evils between mclellan and lincoln seen in that light. let me conclude with the turning point. what do all of these many divisions mean for another claim in the modern scholarship, namely that the election was a turning point in the war. one illuminating way is modelled by the scholar william c davis in an essay on the subject. it's a falisy of reversibility exercise. he asked whether lincoln's defeat would have led to independence and he answers with a resounding no. it would not have led to confederate 2347ds and would not have done so because in the event of a democratic victory, lincoln would have done everything in his power to seize richmond and bring the confed

ras tow heel for the march. it would try to finish the job. even davis continue fist they failed to extract surrender, they would still have been able to hand the president and now commander in chief the prospect of complete and total victory on a silver platter. william c davis asked are we really to suppose that this man of all men given the opportunity to claim the ultimate triumph would have chose tone snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and send jefferson davis a basket of roses and a note saying you win? of course not. we must conclude that the fate of the confederacy did not hinge on this election. i agree with davis's assessment of the situation and the likely course of action. i would argue that this counter factual exercise does not invalidate the case that the election of 1864 was a turning

point for the confederate war effort. how much much confederates tried to downgrade lincoln's election from a ka taft officer tow a set back or argue that the victory was peeric, the fact remains that the election swept away a pillar of the creed, namely the conviction that if the confederates beat the odds, help would come from the outside in the form of a revolution in northern public opinion or foreign recognition. these two were closely related among the rumors of discourse for the campaign and 16 if the democrats won the election and conceded that the confederacy was unconquerable and had to be negotiate and treated with, foreign recognition of the confederacy would transpire in short order. without the prospect of help, had no way to confound the logic of the numbers and resources

theory of their own demise. early in the war, overwhelming numbers and resources was to get southern enlistment and something the confederates are used to. as the war ground on, the numbers formulation took on the aspect of a grim prophesy. the union victory was illegitimate and inevitable. >> the reelection did not crush confederate morale. many had come as they argued as an inevitable or desirable. the margin of lincoln's victory was sobering for southerners. lincoln's triumph was more complete than most.

thinking his election would be closely contested. after lincoln's election, it was more difficult for them to imagine what shape victory might take and keep at bay distressing rumors about what lincoln would do with a mandate in hand. i will close with a revealing example. on november 14th, 1864, the rebel war clerk wrote in his diary, lincoln is reelected and called for a million of men. the following day, jones rejected the proposal as a rumor noting it contradicted they called for a million men. the rumor had taken on a life of its own and it circulated through the press accompanied by commentary. the charleston mercury picked up the threat on november 18th. lincoln we hear calls for a million of men adding while his hand was in, he might as well have called for two or 3

million. it is as easy to get one as the other. the dispatch reported that lincoln is calling for a million of men to swell his armies. it continued he does not call spirits from the deep. they will come. he will have them. it would have been quite as easy to call for five, 10, or 20 millions as for one. confederate southerners stave off defeat. it added in a fitting confederate epitaph, it may now be too late. thank you. i would be happy to take questions if people have them. >> i understand the valley of picking andrew johnson, but why was the decision to leave hannibal? >> again, the goal here is to

keep war democrats in the fold and the perception was that hamlin was perceived by the mainstream and the middle of the spectrum as too anti-slavery and too radical and they wouldn't help. they had nowhere else to go. in a sense it was less important to appeal to them. it seemed they might have somewhere else to go. that went by the wayside and other speakers will say more about that. lincoln hoped to secure this middle ground and this little ground was a place where they were not only in a lot of voters and governors. it was essential to keep the war democrats on board. johnson seemed at that moment to be the perfect answer to his problem.

of course we know that johnson's president, lincoln again watched johnson closely and feels he is a man who can be trusted. johnson will stumble out of the gate during the ceremonies. he is widely reported to have been drunk and makes a real fool of himself and lincoln stands by and said i know andy johnson. he messed up and he is a good man. it can't be emphasized enough that restorically speaking johnson had been known as one of the he was known for fiery rhetoric and uncompromising cessationists of the southern elite. he said he represented the common man. in the north as well as the south. >> we know how the information was communicated to hamlin. whether there was a conversation

with lincoln -- >> that's an interesting question and i don't know. there is a lot of debate about this question of lincoln's choice because we don't have the smoking gun in the form of documents in which lincoln talks about the choice and much of this was behind the scenes negotiations of which there was no written record. we are left to speculate and the problem is that those who consider themselves close to lincoln in the know offer up conflicting perspectives on this. again about the question whether lincoln was cleeply involved in the choice or without having thought much about it. there is evidence to support both points of view. yes, sir? >> how did mclellan reconcile his war democrat with the peace platform of the democratic party of 1864? >> that's a great question again. one i'm sure we will return to

in many contexts. the short answer is that he wasn't able to fully reconcile them. this tension or contradiction hung in the air throughout this campaign in a sense. some democrats hoped it would help them that it would mean that they could appeal both to those who were war democrats and those who were peace democrats and it wouldn't be the first time the party sent mixed messages. mclellan ultimately is a soldier and what he objected to about the platform was less than the possible negotiations and that it declared the war effort a failure. he had profound critiques of lincoln and they had since 1861. the idea that the soldiers would be blamed for having failed for mclellan as a soldier and he prided himself on putting his men above all other

considerations. that war failure was unacceptable. >> let's say johnson had declined the nomination of vice unacceptable. oh, sir there first, and then -- >> let's say johnson had declined the nomination of vice president. who would have been second? and also, lincoln was even concerned that -- they were concerned about lincoln getting assassinated even before he became president. why did he so totally let the convention decide who would be the vice president? >> well, again, there's some debate about how involved he was. and there is speculation about who else was on the list. and again we'll never know definitively. but there is speculation that he talked to ben butler about this. ben butler would have had the same problems, disadvantages, as hamlin. perhaps even more. butler a radical republican. so there was some thought about

whether you're going to reach out to that side of the spectrum. who you would have turned to if it hadn't been johnson, i'm not -- i don't know -- i'm not sure that there's a clear answer to that -- to that question. i think that -- i do think, though, that lincoln had decided that appealing to this middle part of the political spectrum was his first priority in the choice, so he would have picked someone else who could do that. who was -- seemed to be a moderate. and the context for lincoln's thinking here is both immediate electoral concerns but also lincoln's long-standing resentment of having been charged with radicalism. the republican party has been charged with radicalism since it first came on the scene in 1856. and lincoln more than any other republican had been the one to say no we're not radicals. we're not abolitionists we envision a union that's whole, but becomes whole through a gradual process of evolution, of voluntary, gradual compensated demise of slavery, in line with

the wishes of the founders who had wished for slavery's demise. so lincoln is trying to shore up throughout the war the case that this party is fundamentally conservative in the sense that it's the party that embodies the wishes of the founders. and time and time again during the war, he has tried to -- to reject and discredit claims that he is a radical. and so this choice of the union party designation is part of that work. and as my colleague gary gallagher argued in his book called "the union war" that designation of the union party in 1864 is no accident. that's very much a matter of careful calculation, too, and it reflects the fact that for the vast majority of northerners the war was fundamentally about the union, and the destruction of slavery was a means to the end of restoring the union. how many hands? yes, ma'am. >> is there any indication that the confederate military, either the common soldier or confederate military leaders, were in any way involved in

either of these two camps, the davis camp, and the stevens camp? >> sure. if we look at the letters and diaries of confederate soldiers we can see that they followed the election very carefully and we see that spectrum of opinion and also the summer assaults of reasoning, the mental acrobatics on the part of the soldiers. we see some belief very, very ardently that mcclellan's election would be best. others felt that it didn't make sense to put stock in a northern party. others still, their opinions changed based on that of fortunes and they're morale at any given moment. we do know that just let me give you the example of lee. one of the huge perennial questions for scholars with the confederacy is, why did the confederates think they could win the war to begin with, as my students will sometimes say to me. couldn't they crunch the

numbers? they could see the north had more of everything, more men, more industrial output, more everything armies need. the answer to the question is complex. but on the part of men like lee, the key hope was that a revolution in northern public opinion, divisions within the north asserting themselves, mainstream conservative northerners coming to their senses, throwing off the yoke of the lincoln administration, this sort of thing, this was absolutely central to lee's reasoning about how the confederates would win the war. so -- so for someone like lee, the -- the -- the loss of the election of 1864 was, indeed, profoundly demoralizing because they just saw that hope of divisions within the north asserting themselves recede. and the whole issue brings us back to the question of the quality of leadership on both sides. and the sense that those confederates who hoped that those divisions in the north

would prove decisive had underestimated lincoln. and his ability to describe to the northern public in a way that was compelling what they were fighting for. and he proved much better at that than davis did. my quotes from davis here hint at the fact that really, in davis' rhetorical arsenal, yankee atrocities and the idea that the yankees were not fighting fair, were so horrible and barbaric that there was no turning back, this was the theme that davis just relentlessly kept drumming at. and it was not this sort of invocation of positive goals, positive and transcendent goals that lincoln offered northerners. yes? >> -- davis emphasized more manpower for the confederate forces, and up in canada, he had operations secretly to influence the activity -- influence

thinking in the north. that seems to play in to what a very few authors writing about lincoln's assassination have said about food. that in the fall of 1864, he, too, was in montreal meeting confederate agents secretly, and his plan was not to assassinate originally but to kidnap, to exchange for confederate prisoners. and i wonder if this activity from the south or from the confederacy for the election of 1864 somehow is wrapped up in the assassination story? >> well, there's a connection in the sense that there had always been a group of confederates who felt that these kind of machinations, this, this sort of subterfuge, would be effective, and among scholars there's a sort of spectrum of opinion as to how, first of all, how enthusiastic davis was about such schemes.

and how serious they really were. but i think i agree with william c. davis, the scholar i quoted a number of times here who suggests that davis was ambivalent about these schemes. he didn't think that they were central, and secondly, that the men involved in these plots, the canadian agents and so on, were oftentimes improvising without direct orders from davis, and were generally quite feckless, and again, delusional, maybe that's putting it slightly too strongly. so, i think that there's -- there's a connection in that there's this long fascination with the possibility of subterfuge and of infiltration. but the confederates don't have the means or the men or the will to really do it. and they find, again and again when they do try to foment discontent in the north, that that the imagined anti-war northern tie that they hope to conjure into being doesn't exist. so, these men are -- these men

involved in these schemes are forced to conclude that much of this expectation of northern revulsion against lincoln has been -- has been trumped up. that they've fallen prey to a misreading of public opinion, northern public opinion. yes? sir? >> let's back up a bit. because eight months before the election, [ inaudible ] and the fuss over that lasted a few months. and it wasn't until after that the confederacy sent the agents to canada. so, would you like to comment on what -- >> so patrick dahlgren raid that is another one of these topics that is shrouded in unservety. so, dahlgren a young union hothead leads a raid, or that's how it's perceived on both sides, leads a raid against the confederates. the exact purpose of the raid is

not clear. he's killed. and the confederates claim to find on dahlgren's person papers suggesting that his mission was to assassinate jefferson davis, and to infiltrate the confederacy. and they, in their anger at this, at this discovery, they mutilate dahlgren's body and they give him a dog's burial in

an unmarked grave. and he becomes a cause celebre. these shows that the yankees are not fighting fair in how, how, how barbaric to even contemplate assassination. now from the very start there was dispute about whether those orders that were found on dahlgren's person were legitimate or whether they were fabricated. those debates continue among scholars. i can't help but take the opportunity to point out that this becomes wrapped up in the activity of the unionist underground, to get back to the topic of southern unionism which i wrote in southern lady yankee spy, unionists in richmond discerned the location of dahlgren's body. they have him disinterred and clandestinely moved to the farm of a unionist in virginia where he's given a proper burial surrounded by family and friends, or ersatz family, not his actual family, but well-wishers and friends. the controversy boils on,

dahlgren's father, who is a union admiral, and quite an eminent fellow, asks the confederate government if they could please return the body of his son to him. he begs the confederate government. the confederates say no but finally they relent and they say, okay, we'll give you the body back and the confederates go to dig up dahlgren's body in the dog's grave and they find it's not there. that the unionist underground has moved it, and this is one of many signs that the confederate government has that there is a unionist underground in richmond that is defying them but that they can't seem to catch. so, it just speaks of the fact that there's -- that these questions of subterfuge are at work on both sides. the union's espionage operations in the early part of the war are poor and disorganized. they're fight feckless, hate to

use that word again, but by the end of the war the union espionage machine is working quite well, represented by this unionist underground, and the confederates are wringing their hands, particularly the symbolism of this great resurrection of this slain union soldier. any other questions? oh, that will be the last one. okay, thank you so much. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. and during congressional breaks and holidays, too. today we're focusing on the civil war, showing you a recent forum on the 1864 election hosted by the lincoln group of washington, d.c. abraham lincoln ran for re-election that year on a platform of restoring the union and emancipation for slaves. and he used his resounding victory as a mandate for his policies. our coverage of the forum will resume in just a moment. you're watching "american history tv," all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. sunday at 6:00 and. 10:00 p.m. eastern, historians use artifacts and photographs to trace the history of women in the house beginning with the election of janet ranken in 1917 and ending with margaret smilt. that's sunday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern time hen